Purity is the most mysterious of the virtues

Notes on Flannery O’Connor’s ‘Wise Blood’ (with spoilers)

First edition of ‘Wise Blood’ published by Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, 1952

“All comic novels that are any good must be about life and death” wrote Flannery O’Connor in her note to the second edition of her debut novel ‘Wise Blood’.  

When I first read this book I was attracted to the gothic atmosphere and the ironic , distorted images of humankind. I took it to be a satire on religious extremism, having no idea at the time that the author was a devout Catholic and that for her the slogan  ‘Jesus Saves’ was meant as a statement of fact.

Despite her unwavering belief in grace and salvation, O’Connor knew full well the criticisms against the faithful and the arguments for atheism. Instead of mounting a defence of the Catholic Church, she presents the anti-religious viewpoint through the voice of the absurdist central character Hazel Motes. He is  a deeply troubled 18 year old who returns to a deserted home town of Eastrod after being discharged from the army. All his family are dead. He is alone, rootless and faithless.

J.M. COETZEE – WHAT’S IN A NAME?

THE CHILDHOOD OF JESUS by J.M. Coetzee (2013)

This is an odd and frustrating novel.

Calling a book The Childhood of Jesus and then not referring once to Jesus by name is perverse to say the least. On top of this we never learn when and where the story takes place. The protagonists speak Spanish but it’s not their mother tongue (neither is it English).

David is a child with no known natural parents but he doesn’t behave like the son of God. His strangeness and learning difficulties could be due to the fact that he is dyslexic, retarded or too gifted to connect with fellow mortals. The latter would be more in keeping with a religious angle but it’s hard to see that this is Coetzee’s sole motive for writing the novel.

PETER KENNEDY’S CHURCH WITHOUT CHRIST

Peter Kennedy

Two fundamentals for religious worship are a belief in Jesus and faith in the power of prayer.

Peter Kennedy , a priest of St Mary’s Church, Brisbane, Australia, begs to differ. In 2009 he was kicked out of the Catholic Church for his unorthodox ideas.

Undeterred, the 72-year-old set up a thriving St Mary’s In Exile community so that he can continue preaching albeit well outside the narrow-minded parameters of Catholicism.

Tolerance and understanding of difference are high on his agenda, Kennedy recognises gay relationships and believes in equality for women; both fundamental positions the anachronistic Vatican authorities refuse to accept.

If there were such a thing as an interventionist God, he asks, why didn’t He intervene to stop the maniac’s recent killing spree  in Oslo. One might well ask why God never seems to intervene to stop evil acts or prevent natural disasters. If He (She?) is not prepared to give us any sign why should we believe.

I am reminded of the story of atheist philosopher  Bertrand Russell who was once asked what he would say to a deity if, when he died, he found there was indeed an afterlife. “I would ask why he didn’t give more evidence”, he replied.

A documentary film about the Aussie controversy – The Trouble With St Mary’s – was made earlier this year  by Peter Hegedus

Kennedy’s services sound to me a lot like Humanism –  “I think my way of prayer is to stand in wonder at the beauty of people and the wonder of life.”, he says.

I think the idea of people gathering to celebrate life , meditate and the show the value of community is a healthy idea – and if there more churches without christ I would be happy to join the congregation

Related link:
Priest without a prayer (Courier Mail.com)

BACKTRACKING #8 : PATTI SMITH

Bite-sized posts about 7″ singles I own – shameless nostalgia from the days of vinyl.

Patti Smith – Gloria b/w My Generation (Arista, 1976)

This is a kind of brief postscript to yesterday’s review of  Just Kids.

In this book, Patti Smith wrote how she “wanted to infuse the written word with the immediacy and frontal attack of rock and roll”.

While her own poetic songs follow this path, she also proves the fulfilment of this objective with the pair of blazing covers on this single.

Van Morrison‘s Gloria (written while part of Them) is also the opening track on her sublime debut album Horses and is prefaced by her own ‘In excelsia deo’ poem with the memorable opening line “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine”.

This could be taken as a defiant stand against religion, although personally I think she was hitting on the Church as an institution rather than rejecting the notion of faith. To her mind, Jesus should be big enough to take the hit anyway; as she says in Just Kids: “Christ was a man worthy to rebel against, for he was rebellion itself”.

Rebellion is certainly the mood of her demolition job of the Who’s song which uses the Mod classic as a framework for a frenzied blast of pure punk energy. She barely even bothers to sing the words as if to say ‘fuck it you know how it goes anyway’. It was recorded live in Cleveland on January 26th, 1976. The track did not appear on the original vinyl release of Horses but subsequently was added to the CD version. At one point, I’d swear she sings “I hope I die before I get ill’ which, if so, would scupper Townsend’s live fast-die young message. “We created it – let’s take it over!” – she declares enigmatically at the end.

She should have run for President!

LIVE SWANS

WANTED

Rumours of the death of Swans have been exaggerated.

I can vouch for this having experienced their ear-bruising concert at Bologna’s Locomotiv club.

The volume alone is loud enough to waken corpses and should lay to rest any notion that Michael Gira has reconvened the band as a cosy nostalgia act. These six guys may no longer be in the full flush of youth but they put any snot-nosed noise bands to shame.

Gira, at the tender age of 56 , has the look of someone rejuvenated, a fact already placed on record by the September release of the stunning new Swans album My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky.

He is clearly not kidding when he says that in performance he seeks to achieve a state of  “simultaneous self negation and rebirth”.